StrangeR on the opening ceremony of the 2026 Esports World Cup: “Surprisingly, it went off in an organized manner and without any delays.”
L1GA TEAM’s sports director, Alexander “StrangeR” Solomonov, shared his impressions of the third day of the 2026 Esports World Cup in Dota 2 on his personal Telegram channel.
The quote is reproduced with the source’s spelling and punctuation intact
EWC 2026 – Day 3. First match.
Today started unusually early for us, as all the teams were taken to the opening ceremony. Surprisingly, it went off in an organized manner and without any delays.
The pavilion where the matches are played is a 10–15-minute walk from the pavilion where we practice, but given the 35-degree heat, we’re being driven between the pavilions—and they pick us up from the practice pavilion ahead of time.
As it turned out, the teams that played first and second—including us—didn’t even have time to play a single public match.
So we headed into our first match at the EWC with 2.5 maps of Counter-Strike: Source with stand-in players and a couple of public matches played yesterday under our belts.
Considering these factors and the fact that this was the first international LAN for two of our players, I didn’t have any expectations for the match. You know the result.
In the evening after the match, we had more time than yesterday; all technical issues had already been resolved, so we devoted all our time to training and post-match analysis.
Tomorrow we’re playing against PlayTime at approximately 2:30 p.m. Moscow time. It’s definitely going to be a tough match—cheer on our team!
Earlier, Alexander “StrangeR” Solomonov spoke about the practice rooms at the 2026 Esports World Cup for Dota 2: “Let’s start with the most painful part—practice sessions. Of course, it’s very unusual to see this in 2026, especially for the players.”
Photo: Alexander “StrangeR” Solomonov.
